symbolic link question

[Michael O'Donnell]

While solving a related problem I ended up writing the
following little program that might be of interest to you:


#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>


/*
 * ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 * Read lines from stdin, assume they're pathnames, attempt
 * to convert them to their "canonical" form, print canonical
 * version if successful else just echo unconverted input.
 */
int
main(
    int    argc,
    char **argv  )
{
    char   pathname[  102400 ];
    char   canonical[ 102400 ];
    char  *ptr;


    while( fgets( pathname, (sizeof( pathname ) - 1), stdin )  )  {
        if( (ptr = strchr( pathname, '\n' ))  )  {
            *ptr = 0;
        }

        printf( "%s\n", realpath( pathname, canonical )? canonical: pathname );
    }

    return( 0 );
}



...which (after saving that source code in a file
named canonicalPath.c) you might be able to use thus:

   gcc -o ~/bin/canonicalPath canonicalPath.c
   ln -s /tmp myLocalTMPsymlink
   cd `echo myLocalTMPsymlink | ~/bin/canonicalPath`
   pwd



...and of course you could then redefine your 'cd'
command as a function:


   function cd()  {
      builtin cd `echo $1 | ~/bin/canonicalPath`
   }


...which would allow you to just use your 'cd'
command as always.